Wednesday Link Dump

There’s nothing in the blog queue for today unless Paul or Jeff want to whip something up on the fly, so I’m just going to direct you to great stuff from around the Internets. Let’s start with some self-promotion.

I co-host the Phillies and Sabermetrics-focused show “Stathead” with Jeff Sottolano on Phillies 24/7 HD radio, 98.1 WOGL HD-4. The show airs every Tuesday at 3 PM ET and re-airs on Wednesdays at 2 PM ET. If you missed yesterday’s show, you can still grab your HD radio to hear what we had to say about Vance Worley, Ryan Howard, and some trade deadline targets. We also discussed the Bill Conlin article that was dissected here recently.

If you’re into fantasy baseball, I cover starting pitchers every Friday at Baseball Prospectus, looking for undervalued pitchers that are likely available in your leagues.

In case you happened to miss all of the blog action over the last few days, here’s a quick recap:

Jeff Barnes argues that the Phillies should do nothing as the July 31 trading deadline fast approaches. [Link]

I looked at Ryan Howard’s stats and didn’t find much room for optimism. [Link]

Continuing my role as Debbie Downer, I also called for lowered expectations with Vance Worley. [Link]

Jose Bautista continues to be the target of PED suspicion, so I compared his rise to stardom to that of Roy Halladay. [Link]

Phillies stuff elsewhere on the Internet…

At Brotherly Glove, Eric Seidman (@EricSeidman) looks at the impact J.J. Hardy’s recently-signed contract will have on Jimmy Rollins. [Link]

Also at BG, Eric points out that a third baseman may be as important to the Phillies as a corner outfielder or reliever. [Link]

At Zoo With Roy, @Cranekicker delves into Shane Victorino’s mind after he hit what he thought was a home run. [Link]

Chris Jones (@LONG_DRIVE) from The Fightins looks over the players the Phillies could be acquiring before the trading deadline. [Link]

The Good Phight’s Taco Pal thinks Hunter Pence’s career year is unsustainable and isn’t the best player for the Phillies to target. [Link]

Fire Eric Bruntlett looked at the potentially historic seasons from the Phillies’ three aces. [Link]

David Murphy (@HighCheese) reports that Roy Halladay will make his next start after failing to get through the fifth inning on Monday. [Link]

David Hale (@Philled_In) has some nice quotes from Scott Proefrock that indicate the Phillies may be passive leading up to the deadline with quite a few players on their way back from the disabled list. [Link]

Matt Gelb (@magelb) has the latest updates on Roy Oswalt — good news. The hope is an early August return. [Link]

This is an old article from The Good Phight, but I’ve seen the “Team Record when Player X Scores a Run” stat thrown around lately, so I think it’s worth another read. [Link]

General baseball stuff on the Interwebs…

Matt Swartz (@Matt_Swa) is now writing for FanGraphs and he brought SIERA along with him. His debut at FanGraphs features a five-part series explaining SIERA and the recent changes made to the great statistic. Parts one and two have been posted; three should be up sometime today as well.

I’m always amazed at the quality of work Mike Fast (@fastballs) does at Baseball Prospectus. In his latest article, he shows the production of players based on the amount of pitches they see within the strike zone. [Link]

David Schoenfield (@dschoenfield) looks at RBI production from the clean-up spot over the past decade. [Link]

At SB Nation, Jeff Sullivan (@LookoutLanding) concludes that Roy Halladay’s latest outing in Chicago confirms, not denies, that he is not human. [Link]

Due to Halladay’s bad start in Chicago, his streak of 50 consecutive road games with six or more innings pitched was broken. Baseball Reference lists the 50 longest such streaks. [Link]

As a video game enthusiast, when this guy set the record for lowest score without dying in a game of Super Mario Bros. 1, he became my idol:

Anyone have any theories as to how Mathieu Bich pulled off this magic trick?

I don’t know why, but metal seems to translate to the piano well. I’ve heard quite a few metal covers done on piano and none of them have been bad. I’d have preferred if this one wasn’t passed through a computer program, but it’s great nonetheless.

20 comments

Ned

I was wondering if you’d done any research into the reliability and predictability of WHIP as a statistic. It is one of my favorite statistics to measure the success of a pitcher, but dont really know how much it varies over a career.

WHIP isn’t that reliable because of hits. In a single season, or a group of several seasons, pitchers don’t have a whole lot of control over the rate at which batted balls are converted into outs (BABIP). You can find quite a few studies on that, the earliest of which was done by Voros McCracken. Since then, Matt Swartz has done some great research on the topic as well.

Pitchers do have a lot of control over walks, but I would just look at BB% or BB/9 and try to avoid WHIP entirely. It’s descriptive, not predictive.

LTG

Phillie697

MikeD.

The guy is obviously very good at manipulating his deck, and constructs the words from preconfigured blocks of primitive shapes. A single card may have up to 3 different primitives leaving one edge for the blank reveal at the start of the illusion. The illusion would be simpler with multiple decks but apparently still possible with just the one.
It’s a hell of a trick and must require some incredible mental work, not to mention slight of hand. Penn and Teller likely came to a similar conclusion but the complexity of the illusion was so great they thought it must have been facilitated with multiple decks.

Phillie697

Dan

Darn. I was hoping I would be the first one to comment about how the trick is done. I’m curious, MikeD, did you figure it out on your own like I did or did you read/watch a video about it? It doesn’t really matter, I just felt good about myself for figuring it out so quickly on my own, haha.